Oregon Appellate Court 05-18-11

by: Abassos • May 17, 2011 • no comments

Read the full article for details about the following new cases:

• Confessions - Statutory Exclusion for Promises of Leniency
• TPR - Integration

Confessions - Statutory Exclusion

Defendant's confession of theft to his employer should have been excluded because it was induced by promises not to prosecute. ORS 136.425(1) excludes confessions "made under the influence of fear produced by threats." However, ORS 136.425(1) also applies to confessions made under the influence of hope induced by promises. And, it applies to any confession, whether made to a private party, a police officer, or anyone else. The anti-suppression statute, ORS 136.432, does not apply to statutes that have an "internal exclusionary directive", as here.

However, defendant's subsequent confession to the police should not have been suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree. The fruit/tree analysis is a Constitutional one that doesn't apply to a statutory exclusion. Moreover, it is not clear that the promises from the first confession sufficiently affected the second confession because they were separated by Miranda warnings and the presence of a uniformed officer. Since the defendant did not argue at trial that the confession was independently involuntary or excludable, the court does not address that argument. State v. Powell

TPR - Integration

Evidence that Father was violent, dishonest, had sexually abused a 14 year old and had not benefited from services, did not establish that Child, a 5 month old, could not be reintegrated into Father's life over months or years. The main problem was that the record lacked evidence of (1) what sort of treatment, if any, Father would need and (2) what needs, if any, the Child had. Without knowing those things it was impossible to say that reintegration was improbable or even how long it would take. DHS v. ALM